A team of University at Buffalo scientists and engineers has developed a device that in minutes, instead of months, could safely and inexpensively destroy airborne biological agents in buildings as large as the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, which was closed for several months after anthrax was detected there in October 2001.

The device, called the BioBlower™, has immediate homeland-security applications, with the potential to eradicate a wide range of biological pathogens, such as anthrax, smallpox, SARS, influenza, tuberculosis, and other toxic airborne species. It destroys pathogens by rapidly heating contaminated air and could be employed either as a portable air-purification unit for first responders at the site of a biological attack or installed as a permanent part of a building's air-handling system to be activated immediately as soon as biological toxins are detected.